Cyrillic and the Russian Experience

This summer was my third time in a country that uses the Cyrillic alphabet (Serbia was my first and Ukraine was my second).  Each time I have been confronted with Cyrillic I have had two main thoughts.  The first is that it seems like a language that I should be able to decipher, followed immediately by the realization that I am always immediately stumped by the pronunciation of the very first word, and give up.  Helpless surrender comes very quickly.

Third tie was the charm for me.  One reason is that I actually bought a dictionary and spent some time before I went thinking about Russian and the letters, and the fact that it is a phonetic  language, so that if I could pronounce the words, then I could actually read maps and menus and try to make some progress in just getting around.  Finally, once I tried on a consistent basis, it got easier and miraculously, many of the words were in English, so once I cracked Cyrillic, I was much more able to figure things out.  Just another joy of traveling!